First Meetings Stick
by Aodhan Kingkiller
Summary: Has time made the memories of the past fade to dust? Or has distance made the heart grow fonder. Starfighter/No.6 crossover, which I think works really quite well. Actually I'm calling this a crossover, but it's mostly just Starfighter, with some plot points from No.6. The rating will increase later, but right now they're kids, give them a break, christ.
1. First Meeting

Is it bad if I admit I started this in the middle of December then let it sit until I finished it tonight?

I tried to write an eloquent summary to draw in the audience, but I failed. Maybe I'll try again later because right now it is very late. Essentially, as I was reading Starfighter, at some point I started to notice some serious parallels between Starfighter and No.6, particularly in the sense of Nezumi=Cain and Shion=Abel. I'm not sure if this will be particularly original, or basically just a blending of the two stories into one, but I'll do my best to do it justice either way. I have this headcanon where as a kid Cain's accent is much thicker and his English isn't perfect, then it gets better almost to the point of being unnoticeable as he grows up. Therefore, this thing is littered with shitty Russian words/phrases. Check out their meaning at the bottom.

Abel=Ethan  
Cain=Sacha. Who came up with that name? asocialconstruct? Whatever, I quite like it.  
=Sovet (Rat, in Russian. Basically a Russian version of Nezumi.)

EDIT: As of March 3rd I changed the ages a bit. Cain's now 14 and Abel's 15. This is to better fit my mental timeline, just go with it.

* * *

Sacha yelped softly as he tripped over a root in the woods, the jolt jostling the wound in his arm. All he wanted was to get away from the colonies; why was that so awful? What was so bad about a colony rat escaping the colonies that the police would shoot a fourteen year-old boy?

The pain in his arm had by now dulled to an almost numb ache, allowing his attention to be drawn to the pain of his unshod feet, torn by the rough forest floor; to the way the chill air tore at his lungs and the torrential rain stung his eyes.

The shouts of the guards rang out behind him once more, reminding him of the need to flee, spurring his short legs to move faster, _faster,_ despite his exhaustion. He wasn't sure what to do; at home in the colonies- though the warm associations made with the word 'home' made the word hardly accurate- he would have simply slipped into one of the innumerable burned-out buildings or exposed drainpipes. It was hardly likely he would find something like that here, though, in the perfectly false manicured neighborhoods of Earth.

All he could do was keep running, hope he could eventually loose the fuckers in the dark woods or even find some sort of crevice to hide in; a hollow tree trunk or a pile of rocks or… It wasn't as if he would have time to spot and utilize such a thing. Exhausted as he was, it was all Sacha could do to keep running, head away from the voices, pick himself back up when he fell, not let it be the last time he stood.

He burst into a clearing, quite wholly unexpectedly. A clearing with a house in it. As he paused, shocked by the unexpected find- he knew there were houses in the area, of course, had studied the maps, but to find one in seemingly the middle of nowhere was _so unexpected_- the door flew open, flung perhaps wider than intended by the tearing wind, and a skinny boy emerged.

Sacha watched, bemused, as the boy stomped defiantly into the gale, head bowed against the sheeting rain. The boy stormed (pun not intended) to the edge of the porch, gripped the railing, threw back his head and _howled_. The scream seemed to on for longer than it truly did, and in its wake the boy seemed to shrink, deflating back into the pale, useless waifhood that seemed to characterize most of the Earth children Sacha had seen thus far.

As the boy trudged back inside Sacha became aware once again of the shouts behind him, now punctuated by sharp barks. _Der'mo!_ They had dogs on him now. At least the rain would wash away many of the signs of his passing. Sacha chuckled lowly at the absurd hopelessness of his entire situation. What was he to do? Where was he to go? He couldn't keep running forever; his feet were torn and bruised by the rough ground, and he felt faint from loss of blood.

Sacha glanced over at the house, longing for the sort of security it would offer, and was startled to notice the door was still open, curtains whipping in the rough air. He glanced around, checking that no one was watching- but then who would? This house was in practically the middle of nowhere with its immense yard; the only ones who would be watching him were the guards, and he could hear their shouts and the baying of the dogs still a short distance behind in the woods. Judging the opportunity as safe as any he was likely to find, Sacha bolted for the house, for the open door.

He peered around the doorframe, trying to see where the boy had gone, if there was anyone else in the room. There wasn't, and the boy had his back to the open door; good. If nothing else, Sacha knew how to be quiet, and he snuck up behind the boy almost silently, knife in hand- knife, who was he kidding, his "knife" was little more than a shard of the window the guards had shattered when they shot him. Nevertheless, it certainly did the trick, sharp enough to damage.

Sacha slipped a hand over the boy's mouth to quiet his startled yelp, pressed lightly on a few pressure points to immobilize him temporarily. The boy stilled quickly, only partly due to force, and Sacha glared straight into his eyes, which were wide with wonder, and strangely little fear.

"If I take my hand away, you promise not to yell?" Sacha hissed. The other boy nodded immediately- or at least tried to nod. He was still a bit numb after being immobilized, and the hand over his mouth was only complicating matters. "Are you sure? Because I swear on my life if you turn me in I will _pererezat' tebe gorlo_," and Sacha brought his makeshift knife into view, making it flash threateningly, almost cartoonishly, in the light coming through the still-open window.

The other boy nodded again, as vigorously as the situation allowed, and Sacha cautiously pulled his hand away. The other boy had just started to open his mouth when an alarm started to beep wildly from by the door, prompting Sacha to immediately press his knife against the strange boy's throat. "It's just the climate control alarm, let me turn it off." Sacha hesitated, not at all trusting this stranger. "I promise, all I'm going to do is turn if off and close the windows. If I try to do anything else you're free to slit my throat, if you like."

Sacha hesitated a moment more before pulling back to allow the alarm to be turned off, but kept his knife at the ready. The boy, in turn, inched his hand slowly toward the control panel, moving as little in an attempt to appear non-threatening (_As if he could look threatening_, Sacha thought to himself), looking away from Sacha's face only for the absolute minimum of time necessary to disengage the climate controls.

The boy gazed at Sacha again, seeming almost to read him. Sacha shifted uncomfortably, disguising it with and irritated "Tch," before spinning around and stalking to the bed, throwing himself onto it in a glaringly obvious attempt to feel casual and comfortable. The boy stayed where he was, pressed against the wall, staring intently at Sacha across the intervening space. The boy looked at Sacha's face for a moment longer- making Sacha feel uncomfortable and pinned- before his eyes flickered down, to the wound on Sacha's arm that was slowly seeping blood onto the coverlet.

"I could fix that," said the boy, voice cutting through the tense silence at last.

Sacha eyed him first warily, then with open scorn. "Tch, _vy?_ How should a _bespolezno slabak_ like you be any help? You would just mess up. _ Yebat', chto!"_

The other boy looked hurt. "I wouldn't! I'm in the gifted xenobiology program at school, and thus am possessed of a thorough and accurate knowledge of the anatomy of numerous known life forms, including humans! I also posses a basic understanding of first aid, which should be more than enough to treat your shoulder. Also, you're bleeding all over my bed, so please just get off and let me help you!"

Sacha considered the strange boy. Since he'd arrived, he'd done nothing but threaten the other boy, and here the crazy _suka_ was offering to help him? He would never understand the ways of these strange elite, so fucking sheltered, concerned about stupid things like little pet dogs and the coordination of their furniture but never worried about what mattered. But what did Sacha have to lose by accepting? At the very least he would get to be dry for a little while, and he was dead if he went back out anyway. "Fine. _Da._ Go ahead. But tell me your name first. I don't want fucking _neznakomets_ messing with my arm."

The boy grinned, the simple expression lighting up his face, blinding Sacha with its brilliance. "My name's Ethan! What's yours?"

Sacha considered. To tell this brat his real name would be asking for trouble, would be practically as good as turning himself in. What was it the Earth guards had called him again? Rat? Colony rat? That was it. "_Sovet._ You call me Sovet."

The boy- Ethan, Sacha reminded himself- beamed anew. "Sovet? What a strange name. I like it!"

"Not my real name," Sacha muttered, under his breath so Ethan couldn't hear him.

"Now," Ethan exclaimed, jolting Sacha out of his reverie, "Let's patch you up!" Ethan held up a compact first aid kit, cold stainless steel but recognizable by the red cross painted on its lid, a holdover from times many centuries past. As he lofted the kit, Ethan's eyes took on a nearly manic gleam, startling Sacha with their sudden change in character, and honestly causing him a decent bit of concern. Sacha pushed the worry down, wanting simply for his arm to stop throbbing, and perched on the edge of the bed next to Ethan. Upon glancing over, however, Sacha recoiled.

"What the fuck it that?" he demanded, pointing at the syringe Ethan was holding, panic coloring his tone.

"This?" Ethan replied. "Oh, this is just a topical anesthetic. It will dull the pain of the wound itself, as well as make you numb to the feeling of the stitches-"

"Stitches?" Sacha all but shouted, pulling away from the crazy boy he should never have gotten involved with, against Ethan's restraining grip.

"Shh, calm down," Abel attempted to soothe Sovet. "It's just going to be a few. Look at this wound; it's deep but not very big. A few stitches are all. How'd you get this anyway? It looks like you were shot or something, but that can't be."

Sacha settled cautiously back onto the bed, considering his answer. "I was shot at. By those goddamn army _ublyudki._" Sacha winced at the pinching pain of the injections, then eased as a buzzing numbness overtook the wound.

Ethan looked up from where he was threading the needle. "Shot? But guns aren't allowed on Earth, only in the hunting areas, and even then they are rigidly controlled. And what could you have done that they would want to shoot at you in the first place?"

Sacha snarled. "No guns? Stupid. Of course there is guns. As to what I did? I was born, princess. I was born and tried to escape the _dyre_ colonies. I'm just a _koloniya krys_, who would care if I died?" In the heat of his anger, Sacha had failed to notice that Ethan had begun to stitch the wound in his arm. By the time he looked down, Ethan was finished, tying off the last suture and clipping the excess thread.

Ethan regarded Sacha quietly, considering what he had been told. Sacha glared at him, daring Ethan to refute what he had just said. Ethan opened his mouth, and Sacha steeled himself for anything Ethan was about to say.

"Do you want some borscht?" Well apparently not anything.

As Sacha nodded jerkily, thrown by the abrupt change in subject, Ethan made his way over to the replicator set into the wall, and began to program in the code for two servings of borscht.

* * *

As Ethan cleared away the empty bowls, Sacha threw himself back onto the bed with a sigh. He was warm, his arm had been treated, and his stomach was full for the first time in as long as he could remember. Sacha could honestly not give a shit if they killed him now. Sacha closed his eyes when Ethan returned, trying to ignore the other boy. "Sovet. Sovet!" Ethan shook Sacha's shoulder- the one that wasn't injured- trying to get him up. "Sovet, come on, take of that shirt. It's wet and you'll catch your death of cold."

Snorting at the odd and antiquated turn of phrase, Sacha complied, pulling off his tattered and bloodstained shirt (and good riddance) and pulling the chunky sweater Ethan had thrown at him on in its place, and then laying back down. "I'll assume I can sleep now, princess?" he muttered. Ethan didn't answer, merely laid down on the bed next to Sacha, back to him, commanded the lights to turn off, and wished Sacha a muffled goodnight, his breath settling quickly into the gentle pattern of sleep. Sacha chuckled at the easy manner in which the other boy fell asleep, more soundly than Sacha had slept a day in his life, before Sacha, too, slipped surprisingly easily into a deep rest.

* * *

Yeah so this basically just follows (roughly) the first part of No.6. I want to keep going with this, but I'm mad flakey, so if I drop it then sorry.

TRANSLATIONS: I got all these from google, and some from google translate, so I'm like 89% sure most of them are wrong. Sorry.  
Sovet=Rat  
Der'mo=shit  
dorogaya=sweetheart  
vy=you  
bespolezno slabak=useless weakling  
pererezat' tebe gorlo=slit your throat  
yebat', chto=fuck that  
suka=bitch  
da=yeah  
neznakomets=stranger  
ublyudki=bastards  
dyre=shithole  
koloniya krys=colony rat (undoubtedly wrong)

Thanks for reading!


	2. Decisions

SHIT FUCK TITS I HATE- GAHHH I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE LATE, I KNEW IT, RAAGH I'M THE WORST. I'm sorry, I actually wanted to make this a weekly thing, but I just kept procrastinating and procrastinating and then it became a month... I'm sorry. Jeesh, I am not motivated enough for this stuff.

Ok so I actually hate this chapter. I kind of have a ton of ideas for later bits, but not for this first part. If I'd had the foresight I would have combined this with chapter one, but I wanted to get chapter on out so I didn't... basically I really struggled with this chapter. It was hard to get this above like 300 words.

* * *

When Sacha woke it was all at once, with a blissfully rested feeling he couldn't remember ever having truly felt before. The warm dawn sunlight shone down on his face, utterly unlike the cold light that sometimes managed to filter down through the filth of the colonies.

He glanced to his left and considered Ethan, the strange boy who, against any possible reason, had compromised his own position to hide and shield Sacha. If their positions had been reversed, Sacha didn't think for a second that he would have offered Ethan the same courtesy.

Sacha came back to himself. He had waited too long already, to wait any longer to leave would be the foolish. Sacha slid silently from the bed, careful not to wake Ethan. He glanced down at the sweater Ethan had made him wear. It was far nicer, and more importantly far warmer, than anything he had owned in his life.

He'd take it. Ethan clearly wasn't suffering for much. Surely he could spare one goddamn sweater. From the corner of his eye Sacha glimpsed the first aid kit. He considered it for a moment, before grabbing and slipping out the window into the dawn.

Ethan woke gradually. He knew without looking that the other side of the bed was cold, that Sovet had gone. He hadn't honestly expected anything different, but he had still hoped the other boy would be there when he woke up.

Sovet was everything Ethan was not. There were the obvious differences of course: Ethan was comfortably situated, while Sovet was obviously painfully poor; Sovet was dark with ethnic mixing, while Ethan had the pale complexion of the genetically enhanced. But Sovet also possessed a sort of wild freedom, incredibly compelling and seductive in its siren song.

Ethan envied him.

If ever such a sense of rebellion had existed in Ethan, it had long since been beaten out of him by social convention, not to mention his father's violent objections to any sort of "deviant" behavior or perceived defiance. Anything that might tarnish his image, at all damage his chances of political success, was not tolerated.

Difficult as Sovet's childhood may have been, full of poverty, starvation, conflict and disease, Ethan would have preferred it infinitely to his own stifled childhood, his father's physical as well as psychological abuse, the knowledge that no matter what happened at home, his father was a public figure and so Ethan's whole family needed to maintain their perfect, all-Earthian mask whenever they were outside. His whole life Ethan had wanted nothing more than to escape from his father's influence, to be free of the vast shadow his father cast over his life.

Ethan continued to ruminate on Sovet's enviable freedom, the differences in their childhoods, how Ethan's life might be different if he too had grown up in the colonies, of how he could possible escape.

The colonies, freedom, space…

Space.

Of course! Ethan couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of it before. For all his father's power, his reach didn't extend into space, not really. Space was the newest incarnation of the ancient "Wild West" myth, lawless, essentially untouchable by the politics and bureaucracy planetside.

Ethan threw himself back onto his pillows, kicked his legs, strangely excited by the far-off future this new idea might offer him. The thought of finally being free, of being himself, was exciting, but he'd have to play his cards close to his chest. If Ethan's father heard of his son's plans, he would hardly approve- not that he approved of anything Ethan did. But never mind. Ethan had his promise for the future, and it filled him with an excitement unusual in his dull, controlled life.

In a place far away, and yet not really so far at all, another boy was contemplating similar thoughts. All his life Sacha had been pinned down by hardship. For as long as he could remember he had been starving, cold, orphaned, and unable to escape the shithole colonies, where any future one could have ended in a miserable death.

Sacha had taken the first step: he had escaped the colonies, made his way to the motherworld. In all honestly the slum he had eventually settled in was barely better than back home, but the new and exciting world of possibility open to him gave everything a silver veneer and a golden glow of opportunity.

With his newly improved position Earthside a gamut of opportunities had opened before Sacha. He could do things he would never have been able to before, such as finally and truly escape the confines of his existence.

Where better to do that than space?

Sacha had been born in space, of course, in the colonies, but space truly was the one place where the grip of bureaucracy might slacken, a vast and unexplored nothingness filled with wonder. Sacha shifted in the tiny corner he had conquered for himself, trying to become comfortable. He could hardly imagine being truly his own man, able to live his life rather than scrounge and fight for every single scrap that passed his lips.

Sacha wanted security. Almost more than anything he liked the idea of going to sleep and waking up knowing he had been safe, that he had a meal waiting and comfortable conditions that no one could take. Stability needed a job. A job in space. _The military._ The military certainly seemed the best choice. It was secure, it had benefits, Sacha was certainly good at fighting, and best of all _the military operated in space._

There is a certain satisfaction that comes with certainty for the future. In the way of his decision, Sacha was infused with this warm glow, secure in the knowledge that he had a plan and that it was almost certainly attainable, if he only worked at it. Comfortable in the security of his knowledge, Sacha settled back into his corner of ratty rags and slightly insulating filth, one hand on his makeshift knife, and allowed himself to relax, though not fully (never fully) into sleep.

* * *

Yeah, so that was that. Sorry. Honestly I hope the bits after this that I actually have ideas for go a bit better. Also reading back over my stuff I've decided I basically hate my writing style... I don't think there's any Russian bits in this chapter. Also if you missed the edit to last chapter, Cain is now 14 and Abel's 15. Thanks for reading!


End file.
